This post was originally distributed within our Substack newsletter
To kick off this blog, let’s start by giving you a free preview of the MessageUp Content Marketing Framework.
It’s designed to help leaders wrap their heads around B2B messaging and content marketing and do it right.
The MessageUp framework breaks successful messaging and content marketing into six parts:
Laying the foundations for effective messaging and content means having a clear understanding of purpose, mission, vision, and differentiation.
With these key pieces in your pocket, you can build content that resonates with your audience on a deeper level, getting them excited to engage with you as they complete their buyer’s journey.
Beyond colors, fonts, and images lies an underexplored side of many companies’ brands: their personality.
We’ll be talking about voice, tone, and style and how they allow you to humanize an otherwise sterile brand. You’ll give it consistent characteristics that help form an emotional connection with your audience.
This is where a lot of the heavy lifting gets done. Identifying your ideal customer, diving deep into the personas that will be involved in choosing and buying your solution, figuring out how to be relevant and helpful to them at each stage in their buyer’s journey, and understanding when and where to meet them with content that makes their journey frictionless and productive.
At the end of this part, you should have a clear idea of what content you need to be publishing, how frequently, and on what channels.
Which brings us to…
How on earth are you supposed to make all that happen?!
Conquering the content mountain can appear daunting, if not impossible, especially when you have a small team and limited resources.
Fear not! We’ve got strategies and suggestions to share that will help you scale that mountain at a pace your team can sustain (including hiring a few content Sherpas when there’s too much to carry).
Once the wheels are turning and you’re publishing content on a schedule, the next question we address is “How do we know if it’s working?”
Evaluating the performance of your content lets you double-down on things that are working well and try to fix (or abandon) things that aren’t.
It’s also important to realize that what works today might not work tomorrow. Markets, customers, and the platforms we use to communicate with them are all constantly changing, so your content marketing must evolve as well.
Did you think this was a one-and-done process? Hopefully not. Content marketing is a marathon, not a sprint.
Although you might get lucky and bag a few quick wins, the full benefits of effective content marketing can take months to play out. Prospects who encounter your content at the very beginning of their journey might not become customers for a long time, depending on what’s typical for your industry.
Good things come to those who wait. Or, said another way, random acts of marketing seldom pay off, so stick to the plan and follow through!
Until Next Time
We want to make this blog as helpful as possible to you. So, tell us what you'd like to know! The most requested topics will gain priority on our editorial calendar.
We're also looking for guest posts by B2B content marketing experts and practitioners. Email us your ideas and we'll be in touch.
We look forward to your feedback. And if there's someone else you know who would benefit from reading The Framework, please send them this link!
Thank you for reading!
~ Team MessageUp
